Becoming a rocket man is a true rush

Would you go 248 km/h on a rocket toilet?

PHOTO: David Grainger, Postmedia News

By David Grainger, Postmedia News

Originally published: December 13, 2012

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It is not often that one gets to be included in a pantheon of the gods, but this summer I had that distinct honour. I can now unequivocally state that I stand proudly, shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Yuri Gagarin, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Elton John. Yes, I have become a Rocket Man, a brave and intrepid pilot sitting in front of a tongue of flame and a crackling crescendo of noise while the hand of God thrusts you to the cosmos. Well, maybe not the cosmos, but certainly down the sidewalk.

How did this remarkable event occur, you may ask? It all began many years ago after I purchased a rather eccentric custom dragster called the Turbo Sonic. Turbo Sonic was built by famous custom car builder Dick Dean in California in the mid to late 1960s under the auspices of George Barris and his Hollywood custom car shop. The car bore little resemblance to any other dragsters of the period and, in fact, had far more in common with sci-fi rockets than cars built for the strip. It also had a rather unusual power plant — a tiny, 30-pound turbine called a Turbonique.

Tuboniques were rather dangerous rocket-fuelled engines used in drag racing and go carts that are incredibly rare simply because almost all of them blew up while being used. The fuel was a very toxic and explosive mixture called Thermoline, which included its own oxygen supply and when ignited in the Turonique’s large combustion chamber, it produced 300 horsepower at 92,000 rpm.

When I purchased the Turbo Sonic, the engine was missing. It had suffered a pretty standard fate and had blown up on the first day the dragster was taken to the track for a run. I spoke to Dick Dean about it before his passing and he told me that when it blew, it scared the hell out the team and they never attempted to reinstall a new turbine to replace it. In fact, they were lucky because exploding Turboniques had caused casualties in the past.

So, naturally, over the past decade or so, I have been hunting for a replacement engine so I can restore the dragster back to its original configuration. This was more for historical reasons than from any desire to run the car, but I had always flirted with the idea of maybe, just maybe taking it to the dragstrip if I ever did find a replacement Turbonique.

Well, this summer it happened. A brand new, never-used Turbonique turned up in Minneapolis. It was owned by a gentleman who goes by the name The Rocket Man. When I first heard of Rocket Man, I had visions of some kind of eccentric nerd launching model rockets in his mother’s backyard.

When I arrived in Minneapolis to look at the motor, those preconceived notions flew out the window. Oh, the Rocket Man, Ky Michaelson, is indeed a little eccentric, but he is also every bit deserving of the name Rocket Man. He has worked in Hollywood and designed rockets and special effects for films, spent time as a stunt man, which included wing walking on a jet airliner, dated Morgan Fairchild, hung out at the Playboy mansion as a regular, and, most importantly, to at least Ky and people in the know, he launched the first civilian rocket to reach outer space. That vehicle flew to a height of 116 kilometres and after its first 10 seconds of burn, it was speeding along at more than 6,800 km/h. There is a book just in the story of that flight.

I rarely meet people who I can truthfully say are genius, but Ky is definitely that. He has spent a lifetime designing and building rocket-powered vehicles. Not only do they work, but they are also mind-blowingly beautiful. They all look like they have sprung from the pages of 1930 pulp fiction comics and Ky’s eye for detail in his fabulous art deco designs shows an incredible amount of engineering expertise and savvy, despite the fact Ky has no formal training in engineering. He is self-taught, which, to my mind, is the best way to get through life and really accomplish things that rise above the norm.

While I was visiting, Ky talked me into riding a rocket-powered vehicle, and I have to admit I agreed with some trepidation. In short order, Ky had fuelled up an oxygen-powered rocket that was affixed to the back of the vehicle. We then made our way to a local park. On the very short trip there (the park is next to his house), I practiced steering and balancing the vehicle. It was a day of firsts for me. For one, I had never been in or on a rocket-powered platform of any sort, and two, I had never ridden a kid’s push scooter either. Now I was to be in command of a rocket-powered scooter and the test tack was the sidewalk running through the local park. In the first test, Ky’s 12-year-old rode the fiery beast, but the motor caught fire and burned, so we had to run back to the house for a new rocket nozzle.

All fuelled up again and ready to go, Ky lit the engine and told me to scoot as fast as I could. Then the full thrust hit me, and off I went, careening along the sidewalk at probably 10 or 15 kilometres an hour. A wave of heat rose up my legs and all I could think was that the motor was going to blow. I felt I was nearing incineration or, judging by the looks of startled motorists, perhaps incarceration, but I was far too busy to look back. Finally, the fuel ran out and I coasted to a stop. At that moment, I knew how it must have felt to fly into orbit or leap across the vast distances to the moon on a tail of fire. I had become a Rocket Man, too.

After the run, and feeling elated and cocky, I looked at a rocket-powered toilet siting in Ky’s garage. Believe it or not, it was a thing of beauty. Moments later, Ky told me he was taking a newly built motorcycle to Bonneville next season and with great braggadocio, I proclaimed, “Well, if you throw the rocket-powered toilet into the trailer, I’ll have a go at a world’s speed record for a toilet at Bonneville.” Ky smiled and agreed. It was then that his son leaned over and said, “That would be great because we had that toilet doing about 154 miles per hour [248 km/h].”